STRIKE CLOUDS LOOM OVER HOLLYWOOD : 2,800 Technicians at NBC Ready to Walk Out Sunday Night if Final Meeting Fails

Barring a last-minute settlement, more than one-third of NBC’s 8,000 employees will walk off the job at 9:01 p.m. (PDT) Sunday in what the top-rated network says will be its first major strike in 11 years.

The National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, whose 2,800 members at NBC have been working without a contract since April 1, reaffirmed its intent Friday to strike if the network implements a new 252-page contract with the union.

Network officials, who offered the pact to NABET on April 2 as NBC’s final offer, repeated their promise on Friday that NBC would begin working under provisions of the new two-year pact as of Sunday.

“The union continues to say they will go out if we implement (the proposed contract),” said NBC spokeswoman McClain Ramsey. “We are fully prepared for the strike, but we sincerely hope that one doesn’t occur.”

In an attempt to resolve the dispute and avert a walkout, federal mediator Timothy Germany called Friday for a last-ditch meeting between the two sides. Officials of both NBC and the union agreed to meet in New York at 2 p.m. Sunday.

NBC’s labor troubles could be compounded by the uncertain prospects of a second walkout next week by members of the Directors Guild of America. (See accompanying story.)

Neither NBC nor NABET expected the initial stages of the strike to be apparent to television and radio audiences. Shaky camera work or glitches in sound reproduction could affect some programming, such as “The Today Show,” Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” or “Late Night with David Letterman,” but NBC’s Ramsey said that management was trained several months ago for the eventuality of a strike and has been taking “refresher courses” in equipment operation.

NABET represents camera operators, sound engineers, videotape editors, technical directors, writers, field producers and other behind-the-camera personnel. Most on-air personalities are members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which is not on strike and is not expected to honor NABET’s picket lines.

KNBC-TV Channel 4, the network’s Los Angeles station, will be missing about 200 NABET employees and could be one of the earliest NBC outlets to display the effects of the strike. NABET officials said they plan to picket KNBC live minicam teams, but KNBC general manager John Rohrback said he does not anticipate major problems with KNBC’s evening newscasts

NABET Local 53 in Burbank, which represents the KNBC employees, also represents about 500 others at the NBC studios in Burbank where “The Tonight Show,” such soap operas as “Days of Our Lives” and such game shows as the syndicated “Wheel of Fortune” are all taped.

Anticipating a strike, producers of Orion Television’s syndicated “Hollywood Squares” game show moved six weeks ago from NBC to ABC studios in Hollywood. Orion spokesman Bob Oswaks said the game show hopes to return to NBC and resume production there in August, but will probably not do so if NABET remains on strike.

In addition to KNBC-TV, NABET also represents employees at eight NBC owned-and-operated radio stations and four other television stations, including WMAQ-TV in Chicago, WKYC-TV in Cleveland, WRC-TV in Washington, D.C., and WNBC-TV in New York. The network owns no radio stations in Los Angeles, but KFWB-AM (980) is an NBC radio network news affiliate. KFWB executive editor Dave Forman said the all-news station, which does not employ NABET engineers, will continue to use NBC News audio feeds and does not anticipate problems.

The largest concentration of NABET employees--about 1,000 of the affected 2,800--work out of NBC headquarters in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center. Several hundred members of other entertainment unions joined NABET members in an hourlong solidarity rally outside Rockefeller Center on Thursday, carrying picket signs and chanting “Strength in Unity!”

Similar pre-strike rallies were held on Thursday in the half-dozen other urban centers where NBC has broadcast outlets or studios, including Burbank.

Also on Thursday, NBC won an eleventh-hour battle with the union over unfair labor practice charges that NABET filed with the National Labor Relations Board on April 15. Without comment, the NLRB dismissed the allegations that NBC had negotiated its final offer to the union in bad faith.

The final offer was the result of a month of talks when both sides met in San Diego in March to hammer out a new contract. NBC gave NABET its final proposal on April 2 and NABET’s negotiating committee took the contract back to its seven NABET locals.

The committee told the NABET membership that the contract was unacceptable, however, and never offered it to the rank-and-file for a ratification vote.

On Friday, petitions circulated among “Today” show NABET employees urging the negotiating committee to submit the contract to the membership for ratification and possibly avert a strike, but the committee was standing firm in its refusal to put the contract to a vote late Friday.

NABET and NBC negotiators met face-to-face for the last time at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation offices in New York on June 16. Despite seven hours of talks, both sides remained stalemated, and NBC announced its plans to implement the contract, whether NABET approved it or not.

At the meeting, NBC vice president for labor relations Day Krolik III told the union leadership that the network’s new owner, General Electric, would not budge from the final offer.

General Electric bought NBC’s parent company, RCA, last year and installed a General Electric financial executive, Robert Wright, as NBC president. Both Wright and G.E. chairman John F. Welch Jr. have indicated that the network is following the lead of rival networks CBS and ABC in tightening up on expenses.

NABET last struck NBC in 1976. The walkout lasted for seven weeks.

The average NABET employee currently earns over $50,000 a year. The new contract offers raises averaging $30 per week the first year and $40 per week the second year.

But wages have been a side issue at best in the 12-week impasse.

NBC wants the right to hire up to 4% of its work force (6% in the second year of the contract) on a temporary, day-to-day basis in the event of illness, absenteeism or increased workload. NABET contends that the daily hire provision is NBC’s plan to “create a subclass of lower paid, casual workers” who can weaken and, eventually, destroy the union.

At one point in the negotiations, NABET offered to go along with the daily hire provision if NBC would give NABET employees a four-day work week, but NBC has not waivered from its final contract offer.

NABET spokesman John Krieger said that the negotiating committee did not offer the contract to the membership for a vote for the same basic reason that the committee filed its NLRB bad faith charges against the network: “The committee had made a decision that it was totally unacceptable because the proposal hadn’t changed from the company’s original offer that they made in mid-January.”

Times Staff Writer Jay Sharbutt in New York contributed to this story.